


Becoming Mrs. Reynolds

by saperks



Series: Our Mrs. Reynolds [1]
Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Prostitution, Slavery, The Unification War, War, but then it gets happy, kind of, this is kinda sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8840056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saperks/pseuds/saperks
Summary: Before she is Yolanda or Saffron or Bridget, she is a summer child with wind in her hair, dirt between her feet, and a laugh lost to the winds. And then there is fire, and screaming, and her home  burns, and the wind burns, and it all burns and burns and burns. Or how YoSaffBrig became the woman we know.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't betaed so all mistakes are my own. Please feel free to point them out for me. I also live off kudos and comments.

Before she is Yolanda or Saffron or Bridget, she is a summer child with wind in her hair, dirt between her feet, and a laugh lost to the winds. And then there is fire, and screaming, and her home  burns, and the wind burns, and it all burns and burns and burns. There is no more summer, no more laughter, no more dirt between her feet. 

The first thing she learns to do, even before she learns to change her name, is run. Run from the sound of gun shots, from the footsteps of soldiers, from the towns of the dead with their sick water and sick trees and sick air. 

She is eleven years too young and eleven years to old. She distantly thinks that the war is going to kill her. It’s in a soft fuzzy way that nothing else around her is. She used to pretend all the time, pretend that she was a queen, or a doctor, or a mechanic. Pretend that she finally found a way off world to live and explore and travel the black. Pretend, pretend, pretend with the dirt between her feet. But the war has turn dirt to ash and laughter to poison. Her feet ache with her heart because what is, shouldn’t be. She cannot pretend anymore.

She thinks it is fitting that it is the winter’s snow and quietness that will take her after she lost everything in a blaze of red flames and diseased air. It was loud when they came, screaming and yelling and running while desperately, desperately wanting good air.  And now, when they have left,there is finally silence. She has stopped shivering, her breath comes low and easy, warmth comes for the first time since winter lay seige. She is going to die. She welcomes it. 

She does not wake up, but slips in and out. There is never the chaos of warfare or the silence of winter. There is a buzzing of words over and over again as she lays on a rough pallet. Hypothermia. Cholorine. Prices.

None of it matters because it all means the same thing, she is not dead.

When she wakes up in the bed it is the softest thing she’s touched in months. She wants to cry. She is lost and confused and she doesn’t like remembering who she is. Doesn’t want to remember the home that she came from. The pain that she thought she would be leaving behind. She wants to die.

She has been picked up by a nameless organization. There are others there. All of them savaged hopeless by the war. They tell them they will rebuild them. Tell them they owe them. Owe them them their survival. Owe them their life. She owes them nothing.

They fracture them all even further, even smaller, than the war did, but do not rebuild. Before they sell her off she has lost her name. 

The woman who buys her is never cruel but treats her as stock. She works all day on dirt filled fields out in the sun with others, and is always fed just enough. The woman herself may have been bought. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t care. She is going to leave.

It would take months to save up the rations she would need to survive. She doesn’t know the land, doesn’t know how far winter is. Walking out would be a death wish. It is all still better than staying in the fields, working till she rots to the ground. 

It takes her three months to save up enough rations, the planet is different than her own and seems stuck in a perpetual summer. She choose to  walks out in the middle of the night into the river that borders the field after months of listening to the others that go to market. Her plan is secure, it is time to leave.

The soft summers of her childhood taught her how to swim, so she goes in. Rips the bottom of her skirt first to hold the rations atop her head and swims. The water is balmy and soft. It is warm and gets on her face. There are no tears while she swims across to safety, only river water. When she reaches the other side she does not stop to dry her clothes, dry her face, or check her rations, she simply keeps moving. Away from the fields, away from the farms, and away from the namelessness that was her existence there. 

She knows of sex from the others. Knows of it from the type of seedy bars she initially frequents for seedier clients. She could make enough to buy a ride off planet eventually just by being someone else’s warm dream for a night.

She knows sex now. Knows it can manipulate and control when applied as delicately as a paintbrush. She is sixteen and has nothing to lose. She is not afraid. She is not pretending. 

She applies it delicately.

 

_ I’m lost _ she tells them (she's not lying).

 

_ I’m afraid _ she tell them (she's not lying).

 

_ I’ve never done this _ before she tells them (she doesn't specify what) (so she's not lying).

 

A nervous giggle and a shy smile give her more than sunshine and worthless dirt and poisoned laughter. It gets her more coin than she ever even knew existed. It gives her a mask of names, it gives her power. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
